Sports fans divided by coverage

Director of BBC Sport, Roger Mosey, recently gave a talk at Westminster University, and has posted a portion of it on the Sports Editors blog. The talk/article confronts those who question the BBC’s dedication to sporting events, especially considering the addition of high profile sports such as Formula 1, and the 2012 Olympics. However, Mosey has a couple of good arguments up his sleeve:

“We value our relationships with rightsholders and the listed events legislation still requires that they receive a fair and reasonable price for their products; but we put audiences first. We want to maintain access to sport for people who don’t want to pay subscriptions; and, even more crucially, we see it as a public service commitment to win over light or casual viewers to the events they come across on our mass-audience channels.”

I know personally, I don’t mind paying for sports I’m not interested in because I get coverage of those I do like. The football will continue, and I will wait for Wimbledon. This year I’m looking forward to the F1 coverage, I could live without the rugby, but don’t care if it has it’s place on the BBC.

This argument, plus which sports count as the “jewels in the crown” referenced in the post, whether the BBC coverage is as good as Sky Sports, and if the government help is why their sports portfolio is so good, these are all put forward in the comments, and create an interesting argument.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – Sport on the BBC, good, bad, unneccessary? It seems like it will always be one of those things to cause a stir.